-
Thaw; Kooser
I have been gone from this page for a long time and it makes me quite sad to look at the lovely things that have been written months ago and gone unanswered, unacknowledged, unheard by me. Can I respond after such a wintry absence? Do comments in cyberspace keep their flavor when thawed? Mike, your…
-
Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne by Trumbull Stickney It’s autumn in the country I remember. How warm a wind blew here about the ways! And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber During the long sun-sweetened summer-days. It’s cold abroad the country I remember. The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain At midday with a wing aslant and limber;…
-
Stately Pleasure-Domes
I have survived my exams (though I did not excel—thankfully, my grades do not interest me), but I still carry a few battle scars. My Property Law professor gave us a 7-hour exam centering around the hypothetical intellectual property issues that would be involved if (1) Samuel Taylor Coleridge had written Kubla Khan 150 years…
-
Nash on
MetaphorSimilieSelection from Very Like a Whale by Ogden Nash Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold? In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there…
-
Epiphany
Etude by Ted Kooser I have been watching a Great Blue Heron fish in the cattails, easing ahead with the stealth of a lover composing a letter, the hungry words looping and blue as they coil and uncoil, as they kiss and sting. Let’s say that he holds down an everyday job in an office.…
-
Night
Night by Louise Bogan The cold remote islands And the blue estuaries Where what breathes, breathes The restless wind of the inlets, And what drinks, drinks The incoming tide; Where shell and weed Wait upon the salt wash of the sea, And the clear nights of stars Swing their lights westward To set behind the…
-
A Light Left On
A Light Left On by May Sarton In the evening we came back Into our yellow room, For a moment taken aback To find the light left on, Falling on silent flowers, Table, book, empty chair While we had gone elsewhere, Had been away for hours. When we came home together We found the inside…
-
For The Anniversary Of My Death
For The Anniversary Of My Death by W.S. Merwin Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveller Like the beam of a lightless star Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange…
-
Green Rain
Green Rain by Dorothy Livesay I remember the long veils of green rain Feathered like the shawl of my grandmother— Green from the half-green of the spring trees Waving in the valley. I remember the road Like the one which leads to my grandmother’s house, A warm house, with green carpets, Geraniums, a trilling canary…
-
Twelve Songs [Song V, March 1936]
Twelve Songs [Song V, March 1936] by W. H. Auden Fish in the unruffled lakes Their swarming colours wear, Swans in the winter air A white perfection have, And the great lion walks Through his innocent grove; Lion, fish, and swan Act, and are gone Upon Time’s toppling wave. We, till shadowed days are done,…